Timely reminder
Hey all. I'm back after a predictably short hiatus, and was actually planning to write a super uber-positive post about the O Level results, but a sudden turn of events turned those plans to dust. Have to warn that this post is gonna be super negative and dark, and you can choose to click that button with a cross at the top right hand corner of your computer screen if you wanna stop reading at anytime.
This morning, a friend of mine told me that someone rather close had suddenly passed on due to an accident the previous night. Admittedly, I didn't really stop and think about the situation, but now having some quiet moments to myself, I find that I'm thinking more and more about life and death.
I'm sorry if this offends the person who told me this, but initially, I was just relieved that the sudden passing did not happen to someone close to me. When my grandmother passed on last year, I could still be calm and not break down totally, cos I knew for quite a while before that it was only a matter of time. A question of when, not if. I honestly have no idea how I'd react if death struck around me out of the blue. I think I'd break down, knowing that all of a sudden, all I had to remember the person by, were memories. Mere memories. Memories that no matter how fond, still remain just shadows of what had been and fragments of what could have been.
And I wonder. What if death claimed me? Would I have made a big enough impact for people to shed tears for me? Would I fade away from the memories of the living, my place in their lives taken by others? I believe that a person never truly dies, till the memories he/she leaves behind are forgotten by the people who are still living. How long would it take for me to truly die, should death come a-knocking? What if tomorrow never comes? Like the Ronan Keating song "If Tomorrow Never Comes" goes, if my time on earth were through, is the love I gave to others enough to last? Never mind accomplishments and goals and ambitions, should there be no tomorrow, will the people I leave behind have heard all that I've wanted to say to them?
Death always has this habit of putting things into perspective. Suddenly, getting that 11points for O's doesnt mean much anymore, when you realise you could be gone and taken away from the people you love with just a snap of the finger. Isn't that why people are "living life to the fullest"? What then constitutes living to the fullest? I mean, nobody put down a set of clear guidelines what living to the fullest really means. Which leaves Man to individually define living to the fullest. That's what death does. It slaps you in the face, forcing you to swallow bitter pills of reality, always providing sharp pangs of guilt and regret over unspoken words and feelings.
In this results-based society, where material and paper qualifications mean the world to some, I think it's good, that we have the reality of death, the suddenness and randomness of death, to keep us rooted, and to give us timely reminders of how at the end of the day, regardless of how relentless our pursuit of material success is, we are ultimately still human. We have to bear in mind, that all that remains of our lives, is a dash between two dates. But what we do in this intermission of two dates, could impact significantly in the lives of others.
So the question that remains is : what's stopping us from making the biggest impact that we can, daily?
